Alien Newsletter #13: =>Banis|h|sinaV<=
In which our alien contemplates the many ways humans cancel each other in the 21st century
Network Note: As prior readers of this newsletter may know, the alien whose transmissions to its fellow extraterrestrials we chronicle tends to be quite aloof when it comes to political and societal issues on earth. And this is unfortunate, because as it speaks upon the uniquely networked phenomenon of cancel culture, it discusses a few technological advancements devised by its home planet that, along with the implantation of a few additional bodily orifices, may indeed assist humans in bringing order and tranquility to the collective discussion.
The Greatest Apes, it appears, have an outsized fondness for making noise. It comes naturally to them. Whether it’s involving the painstakingly structured layerings of tone, rhythm and melody they call “music” or the incessant maneuverings of their mouths, tongue and teeth they consider “speech,” it pours out of them in an unending torrent. And there seems to be no better way to distress one of them than to force them to refrain from it, even for just a minute. Punishment for younger members of this species is often spent in “detention” periods of silence. And while the GA practice of “meditation” attempts to “quiet the mind” and squelch this constant urge, only strongly disciplined GAs can shut off the inner commotion inside of their central nervous systems for so long. The rest end up getting distracted by numb posteriors, inconveniently timed texts and the barely suppressed wondering about what they’re supposed to be getting out of the endeavor in the first place.
In addition, the Greatest Apes live increasingly public and exposed lives. They are encouraged to create “content” and leave responses on any number of frequently used ledgers on the digital telecommunications technologies that permeate their lives. It is on these ledgers that the Greatest Apes have reshaped their tactics and now conduct their battles. Here, the juxtaposition of specific images, sounds and text are seen as violent acts when presented to specific people, and since these ledgers usually have no attendant security force that can mete out justice in many cases, (and in the off-moments when the owners of these ledgers do intervene, it often falls under bitter dispute.) it often falls upon the aggrieved to take action themselves. Such is the root of cancel culture, one of the most curious forms of social opprobrium practiced amongst the Greatest Apes. For no matter how widely distributed it may be amongst them, it seems to possess absolutely no adherents, but a wide panoply of practitioners.
And this is surprising, because for the most part, cancel culture is only very rarely effective in its ultimate goals, which is to utterly decimate a given Greatest Ape’s social currency, not to mention the livelihood which depends upon it. The presence, or absence, of shame plays the deciding role in these cases. A recent case involves a GA entitled John Gruder, who for long stretches of time found success in coordinating hulking masses of male GAs to throw objects and inflict head concussions upon each other. However, private digital communications were unearthed in which Gruder expressed insulting language towards historically maligned groups of GAs, upon which the cancellation found purchase. However, a famed mirth producer named David Chappelle made statements involving transgender GAs in public, and found voluble pockets of support and condemnation for it. And while Chappelle recently acknowledged professional plans of his scuttled because of the cancellation, he continues to speak to, and for, enough GAs to neutralize the forces of cancellation for now.
The degree to which cancellation succeeds or fails, I sense, rests on a complex and dynamic social calculus. In some cases, such as Gruder, his cancellation suggests a symbolic atonement for the injustices committed by his tribe. On the other [untranslatable, but we think the equivalent in this language is “hand”], Chappelle belongs to a tribe historically marginalized by Gruder’s tribe [see Alien Newsletter #6: Damage Control], so the act of further marginalizing a member of said tribe perhaps confounds the cancellation process. Moreover, the hybrid outrage-botnode 3A Mel Gibson continues to infuriate all that come across him ever since the Murdoch 2432A neural network was grafted into his amygdala around the time The Passion of the Christ was released, and he continues to make his presence felt. Therefore, the calculus of success when it comes to a cancellation attempt is difficult to divine with any precision.
Of course, the targets of cancellation can often play victim, which complicates matters further, because the side whose victimhood in these struggles is deemed most authentic usually wins the battle. Travis Tritt, famed practitioner of the nationalist form of popular music known in Northern Hemisphere Plate 2 as “Country-Western,” announced that he would not exhibit his music anywhere where vaccines would be mandated, after which a cancellation campaign was launched. He later thanked a sports team from “refusing to be bullied” by letting him sing his country’s theme song at their competition. And speaking of nationalism, Vladimir Putin, the leader of Central Eastern Kleptocratic Plate I, decried cancellation as a means of rival nations to impose its cultural will upon his tribe. The tactic appears to depict disregard for the grievances of the offended tribe as a principled stand for the rights of the cancelled.
The prospect of cancellation appears most challenging within the GA’s halls of higher learning, many of which are built atop the foundation of free speech and inquiry. And again, many tribes avail themselves to this tactic. Students attempted to thwart a public panel on Israel and Palestine at the University of Amherst-Massachusetts because they deemed such a panel would cause “irreparable harm.” Similarly, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cancelled a speech by Dorian Abbott, a geologist who has spoken out against what he felt were ineffective social policies at universities. It should be noted that Abbott was set to speak strictly on geology in his lecture, rather than his extracurricular political positions.
Clearly, the Greatest Apes cry out for a better means of enforcing civility amongst their fractious tribes. You all will recall a similar impasse we encountered as a species millennia ago before the invention of the Thought Bank. While it was disputed at first, having a central repository where the individual thoughts and opinions of our species could be excised, examined, refined and reinserted back into the individual’s corporeality made all the difference. After that, we all could collectively, to use one of the GAs’ terms of phrase, change each other’s minds far more effectively.
However, having researched the issue, I’ve determined that such a solution would not work with the Greatest Apes as currently configured. To do so would necessitate taking a hollowed out fiber-optic cable and finding a proper input node — a node which the Greatest Apes have, but it is usually reserved for waste disposal. After thrusting it up about several yards, I would have to extract their thoughts by piping in several gallons of Bengay until the thoughts were properly liquefied. Then we would have to drill several holes into their cranium, although the placement of alligator clips onto their nipples may also do the trick, so as to let the waste liquid ooze out after it had fully circulated through their central programming nodes. While there are a few Greatest Apes that would actually enjoy this, large-scale voluntary adoption of this would be problematic at best, considering the problems they continue to face with vaccination.
Dark Matters
The GAs congratulate themselves for determining that what they thought at first would have been an extraterrestrial actually wasn’t one.
The persistent-image light-play DUNE has apparently captured the momentary attention of the Greatest Apes. One of the political tribes shows what can only be interpreted as hybrid “sass”/strategy in its assessment of the phenomena.
It is Halloween amongst a particularly wealthy subset of the GAs. This means garish bodily adornment, bone-decaying food given away for free and more primitive depictions of our former transportation devices on display in front of their shelters.